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Juliet Jones lives in domestic chaos with husband Steve, son Oliver (aged 4) and daughter Billie (aged 3) in Hertfordshire.  INTRODUCTIONWelcome to My Planet ‘This is the diary of a day trip that turned into a journey from which I never returned.” THIS WEEK'S ENTRYStay tuned - Juliet's been feeling poorly (nasty bug) but will check in again soon. PREVIOUSLY ON ‘PLANET PARENT’Week Forty-Two: Swimming with Dolphins ‘When we lie there with the winter sun falling in through the bedroom window I know for certain what being in love is. And the pleasure is all the more precious when I recall how hard I found it to love her when she was born.’ Week Forty-One: Love Is in the Air ‘The old me is addicted to all the news programmes but now I’m experiencing a constant battle, with the new me wanting desperately to switch off.’ Week Forty: Nature's Way ‘Nesting involves deciding at 11.30 pm that the skirting boards need cleaning. It means getting tearful over a lampshade that you’ve put up with for the past four years that is now actively preventing you from having a happy birth.’ Week Thirty-Nine: The Body Beautiful ‘Before me lies a tale of change that I could barely imagine just five short years ago.’ Week Thirty-Eight: A to B ‘It dawns on me that this is not really about losing the car; this is about me finally losing Me.’ Week Thirty-Seven: The Butler Did It ‘He came downstairs visibly shaken. We exchanged a look that only those complicit in dark crimes share. This was our secret.’ Week Thirty-Six: Christmas is Coming ‘I don’t blame the darlings for being excited; I love Christmas.’ Week Thirty-Five: TV Times ‘I don’t know why so many TV programme makers feel compelled to construct such a saccharine world for our babes. It’s clearly at odds with what most of them experience at home.’ Week Thirty-Four: Take Aim, Fire! ‘The fact remains that I have a little testosterone-charged boy who dashes about in his pants firing guns at us without any idea of what he is representing.’ Week Thirty-Three: What's Cooking? ‘I have passed a milestone, I have made a cake that everyone has eaten and enjoyed. I have impressed my mum and delighted my kids, and I can’t resist saying it, I’ve had my cake and eaten it.’ Week Thirty-Two: Party On Dude ‘At any one time a whole kitchen cupboard door is covered with invitations.’ Week Thirty-One ‘When I last wrote, I was still feeling quite jovial about it all, but that’s all changed.’ Week Thirty: Me and Mr Shanks ‘I’m six weeks pregnant.’ Week Twenty-Nine: Lives of Crime ‘She’s a cool customer and she’s got nerves of steel. Perhaps it’s because she’s grown up with Olly constantly leaping out at her armed to the teeth and yelling. It’s got to toughen you up.’ Week Twenty-Eight: Quiet Please ‘Please tell me that the double entendre so loudly delivered by my son was only heard by me. Alas no, the looks have begun...’ Week Twenty-Seven: I'm Late, I'm Late, For a Very Important Date ‘I’m one of those people who sets her watch five minutes fast in order to try and con herself into keeping time. But it doesn’t work, so I am always late for school, late with meals, late for friends, late with my deadline for this diary and now, to top it all, late with my period.’ Week Twenty-Six: As Time Goes By ‘I thought too about how then I had all the time in the world and these days I don’t seem to have five minutes in which to get myself together.’ Week Twenty-Five: Memories ‘They are growing and changing, but somehow I can’t seem to bank any of the memories. Sure we have photos, video, tape-recordings, drawings, scribblings, old clothes and shoes – a thousand reminders of how they were, but I just can’t remember anything other than yesterday.’ Week Twenty-Four: Wet, Wet, Wet ‘Unless things change very soon my abiding memory of this year will be of the wet. Wet rain, wet clothes, wet toilet seats, wet beds, and wet, tear stained faces, mine included.’ Week Twenty-Three: The Writing's On The Wall ‘I know that it’s probably not a priority of the Genome Project but I bet when the time comes we’ll find out that “Like Father, Like Son” applies to more than just hair colour.’ Week Twenty-Two: Blood, Sweat and Tears ‘I feel I have let my baby down, and every time she flinches when I take her top off, and every time she starts at a loud noise, or just cries for no reason I think of last Tuesday and what she was put through and I wonder how I let this happen.’ Week Twenty-One ‘Contrary to the popular image of ‘cake and chatting’, forging relationships with other mothers is full of emotion and sometimes fraught with difficulty.’ Week Twenty: Out of Sight, Out of My Mind ‘Just as that woman who always dates dreadful cads knows that actually she is afraid of, and avoiding, commitment, I know that I am, in fact, pretending I don’t have children.’ Week Nineteen: What a Difference a Day Makes ‘On Friday, I felt like our run of bad luck was turning into a marathon. But on Saturday the sun shone, and our world changed.’ Week Eighteen: Boys Will Be Boys ‘Before I had Olly you would have found me spouting off about how if you raise a boy and girl the same way you’ll find very little difference. How it was society that moulded the male and the gender divide was totally artificial. How wrong I was.’ Week Seventeen: Hotel Hospital ‘Had I so lost sight of my old life that hospitalisation equalled a holiday?’ Week Sixteen: Hospital ‘Well the joke is wearing a bit thin, illness wise. I am writing this from a camp bed next to Billie’s hospital bed.’ Week Fifteen: It Wasn't The Cough That Carried Her Off ‘Now as I get back to the old routine, Billie demands that “Daddy do it” and Olly tells me how Daddy always does broccoli and carrots with his lunch and always reads him a story (as opposed to nuggets and Nickelodeon TV).’ Week Fourteen: Like Mother, Like Daughter ‘Will I make my kids feel like my mum made me feel? Hot and cross and totally teenage in Boots, as she yelled down the aisle whilst searching for foot powder “Juliet, is it just your feet that smell?”’ Week Thirteen: Hands, Feet and Boompsy Daisy ‘I’m quite good at the Blue Peter stuff but less keen on the Holby City area in which I seem to have landed a lead role. Like the Eskimos who have loads of words for snow and the Italians who have as many for love, our family now has a thousand different words for sick…’ Week Twelve: Ahoy There Cap'n ‘That gorgeous chap who steered his fishing vessel (was it a boat? a submarine? who cares!) through the all-too-depleted seas to find us the best white fish for our fingers has been replaced by Uncle Albert from Only Fools and Horses. Or someone who looks just like him.’ Week Eleven: Free Willy ‘Any little boy having to explain something to do with his “willy” will be understood. How many of us, other than the parents of the girl in question, will know what she is referring to when she talks about her “fu fu”?’ Week Ten: Tea and Sympathy ‘I blithely expected these gatherings of mums to be cosy, gossipy, rather bland affairs, with plenty of cake and some cooing over each other’s offspring. I didn’t expect to be competing in the parenting version of The Weakest Link.’ Week Nine: Why I Don't Like Mondays Part 2 ‘There, on his cheek, is a livid bite mark. And there’s no getting away from it, my darling, sweet innocent girl is Hannibal Lecter.’ Week Eight: Why I Don't Like Mondays ‘Silence is not Golden, It is a Sign of Big Trouble.’ Week Seven: Poo and Biscuits ‘So there I am again picking up bits of biscuit, grumbling and clucking away at her while she blithely gazes at me with absolutely no sign of a guilty conscience, when it happens.’ Week Six: The Show Must Go On ‘I had my first taste of the stage this Christmas. It was nerve racking and I must admit that I cried several times, but all in all I think I rose to the occasion and performed in my role as well as I could. My part? Mother of Oliver, ‘Crowd’ in Cinderella, his first school play.’ Week Five: If (Or Letter from the Front) ‘You can be the parent you always wished you’d had (as well as the parent that you vowed you’d never become).’ Week Four: Happy Christmas ‘So Christmas is coming around again and we are hoping for a peaceful one. Olly is listening at the window every night for the sound of sleigh bells and Bill has managed to remove and smash all the decorations that are within grabbing distance.’ Week Three: Nice Work If You Can Get It ‘I reckon it’s time we had a bit of Parent Pride. Maybe we could have a symbol or logo – a grubby handprint perhaps or a basket full of washing. Perhaps we could wear a special epaulet with a little bit of sick on it.’ Week Two: Bad Hair Day ‘He wriggles and squirms and hops and shuffles, and ends up with a rather jaunty, slanting fringe and a passable pageboy style cut all round.’ Week One: No Sleep ‘Till Bedtime ‘My kids don’t sleep. As a result, I am 39 in human years and 147 in mummy years….’
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